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the boy :: isaac

the baby :: ezra

Sunday, March 12, 2017

When we first looked at our house, 3 years ago, I fell in love with the immense amount of sunlight that flooded through the main living space. It was Tony who was drawn to the back of the room to actually look at what was beyond the windows bathing us in natural light.

And with barely contained glee, he said, "It's a pond!"

My heart sunk just a little, as I weighed the impact. A pond. What a gigantic drowning risk to take on, just on the other side of our fence.

My husband on the other hand jumped to one thought and one thought only, hockey.

Each winter since we moved in has brought more and more enjoyment, which is easy considering two winters ago Miri wouldn't even let you put her down in snow without melting down.

I love that our children will have fond childhood memories of the luxury of skating in their backyard, bringing the neighbors together and enjoying the slice of a blade through not quite perfect ice.

Thursday, December 3, 2015

For awhile, I felt like my last post was so aptly titled that it would be the perfect post to walk away from . . . but, I don't think I'll ever be able to completely walk away. This blog is incomplete now. It is no longer a great reflection of our lives, capturing little moments, but it still has value.

Today Amy asked if it's my photographer's mind that remembers photos that I use for comparisons. I answered that I didn't know why, but after thinking about it today, I believe through blogging I've remembered photos more over the years because I wrote the story of the photos.

In October we went to the apple orchard and I had no intention of getting Isaac to recreate a photo I took when he was 18 months old, but all of the sudden, he was doing the exact same mannerism. Pulling the photos next to each other makes my heart skip a beat. Five years.

Friday, April 24, 2015

I can distinctly remember squirming as my wonderful labor and delivery nurse eyed Isaac's latch, before pausing for a second and moving him to get him properly attached. I was so uncomfortable then with her gaze and that she touched me while I was exposed.

Little did I know how big of a role nursing would have in my life, or how much I would talk about it, with strangers, friends and family.

It's a wonder to me now, for something that I thought was quite peculiar, would eventually drive me to purchase drugs from Canada in an effort to continue!

All that to say, that in the last almost 6 years of motherhood, I've spent 46 months breastfeeding, and now, I'm done.

One of my most beloved acts of mothering is completed.

I had so hoped that I could nurse Naomi longer than Miri even, since I was home and wouldn't need to be pumping, but when I started to struggle with supply at only two or three months, I knew that the odds were not in my favor. I started using domperidone when Nomi was around 4 months old and when I maxed it out, I was able to keep up with her demand. And then she hit a growth spurt and there was no keeping up. I set a goal to reach 6 months and barely limped through to it, but I did.

I will always treasure my memories of milk drunk babies, sweet milky breath and warm bodies snuggled at my chest. I'm forever sad that I will not be able to keep nursing Naomi, as I didn't have near enough time kissing her hand as she explored my face.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

I wasn't happy to find myself pregnant at the beginning of 2014. I doubt that's shocking to those who've read between the lines or had a conversation with me last year.

Sure, we'd made comments about the possibility of a 4th child someday, but it was quite different to all of the sudden be pregnant, again. The year of 2014 was supposed to be a big year for me, personally. I had goals and dreams, things I wanted to prove to myself. And another baby, another year of being a vessel, once again laying down myself for the development of life, they were completely contradictory to what I envisioned.

And yet, 2014 did end up being a HUGE year for me. I learned more about myself through the course of those 365 days, directly due to expecting our bonus baby. Not all of what I learned was positive, actually most of what I learned about myself wasn't, but there's something to be said for examining the darkest parts of yourself. I would honestly describe it as standing at the edge of an abyss, toeing the line, and mustering the courage to walk away. Of course, this is dramatizing very mundane aspects of days, weeks, months. It wasn't all dark, dreary and oppressive, but in the small moments to myself, I was overwhelmed in it.

It wasn't about Naomi. I'm so happy to say that I loved and embraced her whole heartedly from the moment I first laid eyes on her, something that in the early weeks of my pregnancy, I felt incapable of doing. I was scared, so scared of fulfilling all of my obligations to my family and clients, and unfortunately throughout the fall, most of the things that I was most afraid of started to occur. I felt completely alone and like I was failing, everything and everyone.

I had to go grocery shopping with three kids the day after we got home from the hospital, because I hadn't stocked my fridge in preparation for my baby to come 2 1/2 weeks early. I shot my first session at two weeks post partum, because it was a milestone session to be rescheduled as soon as possible following the early birth. Life just didn't stop, for even the blink of an eye to take in the new life that we'd welcomed. It just kept going at a crazy pace.

Something finally clicked around Christmas. By that time I had drank and eaten my way back to the weight I was pregnant with Naomi and then some. I'd never weighed that much, ever. Pregnant or not. It was finally the kick in the pants I needed. I wasn't happy with who I was. I felt weighed down by my life, like I physically couldn't breath because of those I loved the most.

I'm sure this will somehow be misconstrued, but my hope is that it can help someone. If there's one reader who can be nudged into the right direction or the arms of someone who cares, it will have been worth it.

Because I'm not there anymore. I was able to stare down the monster within myself. And I won. Everyday I'm striving to be a better version of me, to figure out who that even looks like as a mom of 4. And as opposed to last fall, I am certain that I will successfully regain my identity, which includes being a mother, but leaves room for more.

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Now that we have four kids, Tony and I really struggle to prioritize our marriage. Isaac has been very needy lately, and I think it's primarily due to the length of time he's away from the family at school. Ezra and Miri are just in the thick of gaining independence and responsibility, meaning unless supervised they are making huge messes. And Naomi, well, she obviously needs the most amount of care.

I told Tony last week that he gets the worst of me. There's no doubt about it. After caring for the kids, trying to continue to keep my business up, and trying to give myself a little bit of fringe time for myself, there's not much of me left to go around. Amazingly, he said that if the worst of me is all he gets, that he'd still be a happy man. I don't know how God shaped him into the person he is today, but I'm forever grateful. This is how we're still happily married.

And ten years ago, it started in the middle of a mall, with a dorky guy wearing glasses, a button up I didn't like and a hockey jacket, when he met a girl who'd finally moved past her high school boyfriend, literally an hour before. My heart was racing and I was almost late, but I had to take a second to stop in a storefront to gather my thoughts, before rushing into my future.

I told my friends prior to meeting Tony that he was fictional perfection. On paper he seemed too good to be true. But after meeting him, I gushed to Nadia, who'd been waiting as my spy, that I thought I would marry him.

Early on in our relationship, after exchanging those three little words, Tony always raved that he would always be in love with me. A little jaded, I told him that it wasn't true and that I wasn't interested in him always being in love with me, as I found it unsustainable. I told him that I cared more that if we fell out of love with each other, that we would commit to falling back in love.